Posts by Rich 11

Re: Isn't that what "AI" is supposed to be capable of doing?

It's always time to move out of Scunthorpe. Scunthorpe makes Immingham look good.

I like absence of a comma between culture and media.

Agar?

Re: Who needs stuff?

I want to know how long it's going to take those non-existent ferries to sail to Sydney and back once we get Johnson's Australia deal from the EU, rather than the Canada deal, the Iceland deal, the Norway deal, the Switzerland deal and the have-our-cake-and-eat-it deal which we've previously been promised.

The only time I was ever asked was the Monday after my 18th birthday. The barmaid said she didn't believe me so I pointed through the hatch to the lounge bar and said, "Ask Jeff. He's my neighbour and he was at my party on Saturday." She turned to Jeff, who looked up from his dominos, grinned and said, "Nah, never seen 'im before in my life."

I pissed on his lawn when I got home.

Why wait for the show?

"Let's do the time-YORP aga-aain!"

Re: Same as Audits

If the auditors don't find something to report, they're liable to inflate something irrelevant into an issue that they can report on.

This is true.

Some 15 years ago a PHB decided it would be fine and dandy idea to hold a software standards audit. Those of us who knew that for the entire previous decade he'd consistently refused to allow us to build documentation time into project schedules glared daggers at him, but the proposal was accepted by senior management, the money was conjured seemingly out of nowhere and the auditors appointed (a famous company whose name begins with 'L' and ends with 'bastards').

Three months later we submitted all our source code, documentation, working procedures, standards, QA evaluations, meeting notes, etc, etc to them. Excepting the source code, half of it hadn't existed three months earlier. Interviews commenced, with all staff required to assist to the best of their ability. For a week the auditors poked around our systems, demanding demonstrations of procedures put into practice, all that sort of stuff. It was exhausting but it actually went quite well, although only because of all the preparation we'd put into it.

A month later we got the report. They didn't find (to my mind) any major problems but just a handful of small ones. One of them was with an old Perl script of mine, which unfortunately the lead auditor used as an example at the presentation. His complaint was that the script was unreadable by any normal human, and as such recommended that we revisit our coding standards. Our PHB got on his hind feet to announce that the review would be led by the auditors and they would provide subsequent training sessions to all programmers (no doubt at extra cost). He wasn't pleased with the laughter that provoked, and I had to point out that the auditor was complaining about a script which had been minified (for some reason now lost in the mists of time) and wasn't the version which should have been submitted for auditing -- so sorry.

Re: Meaning what?

Just imagine how much fun the Faux News crowd will have with that one.

Re: To be honest ...

Planet Fox.

Re: Luck to Bezos

If a fraction of my hard-earned dosh should go to support this case I might even renew my Amazon Prime subscription.

Re: 1-2-3-4-5?

Nah, you've got it backwards.

(Not showing my age in the least.)

Re: Can't stop smiling

999 smartphones along the M5/M6 junction?

Re: how cute

Inferior by design.

Now there's a motto to live by.

The bit which includes the 158 countries not in the EU?

About half of whom have a GNP barely matching that of Norwich.

It's the countries we already have trade deals with through the EU which are the most immediate concern, with about two-thirds now covered by continuity deals and representing about three-quarters of our non-EU trade. Japan, for example, is a significant omission, alongside the US. They're not expected to agree to simple continuity deals. It's taken three years to get the easiest ones done, the ones where we do have either advantage or parity.

When the continuity deals we do have start to run out (after the transition period ends in June 2021, or six months sooner if BoJo throws his toys out the pram) we should indeed find some worthwhile gains after longer renegotiations, but countries like South Korea and the Southern African union will be well-placed to take advantage of our relative weakness outside the EU. It's going to be an interesting* decade.

*Hopefully not in the Chinese curse sense.

Re: Deliveries [..] won't start until the week commencing 10 February

Allow me to recommend suitable replacements.

Re: Cascading collisions?

It was indeed a very enjoyable film, but their take on orbital mechanics was a bit out. That said, it'd still earn a 9.9/10 on the Hollywood Factual Accuracy scale.

Why do people post musings before checking?

Since 0laf's musing was more accurate than yours, I have to wonder that too.

Re: it would be like a car hitting a shopping cart

Which of them do you think will end up in the canal?

Re: VAT

Well obviously the Eton prefects are able to get the first-years to fag for them. Isn't that enough?

Re: they are still messing with historical figures too much for my liking

It's an insult to Whittaker frankly - a male doctor would never be given such lines.

Really? Don't you remember Tennant and Madame Pompadour?